


Memento

by Meicdon13



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Amnesia, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Canon, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 11:30:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5415164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meicdon13/pseuds/Meicdon13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hazel can’t remember much about his life before being found at the foot of the mountain. All he has is a worn bandanna that he can’t bear to throw away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memento

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn’t come up with a way to give you guys a happy fic so you get this instead. Thanks to [girlwithribbon](http://girlwithribbon.tumblr.com/) for brainstorming the plot with me! I know the tags say Gat/Hazel but there’s no actual Gat here because I couldn’t come up with a way for him to come back to life. I actually had a semi-happy (bittersweet?) ending for this but I went for maximum sads instead ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
> 
> Thanks to [whymzycal](http://whymzycal.dreamwidth.org/) for the beta! You can also read this at [Dreamwidth](http://mabangis.dreamwidth.org/114394.html#cutid1) and [Tumblr](http://mtblackbearfic.tumblr.com/post/135102209759/memento).

Two years is long enough to get him settled down comfortably in the village and Hazel moves easily through the daily routine of a farmer without complaint. As old man Peng grows even older, Hazel finds his days getting busier with chores and errands, enjoying the simplicity of his new life and the fulfillment he feels at the end of each day.

Two years is long enough for Hazel to get a farmer’s tan (though he’s still paler than everyone else in the village) and for his hands to grow calloused from manual labor. He’s all wiry strength and compact muscle, a far cry from his original build.

Sometimes Hazel wonders what kind of person he must have been before. If he’d lived a life worth remembering, then he would have remembered something aside from his name by now wouldn’t he? There must be a reason behind the blank space in his mind. It saddens him to think that it might be because he may have been a horrible person, with nothing but bad memories he was better off without.

At least once a month, Hazel sets aside time to trek towards the mountains, to the place where old man Peng first found him. The villagers think that he had been traveling up the mountain when a landslide hit. Hazel can still see the path the boulders had made as they fell, but the barren scar along the mountain’s side is getting harder to spot, the edges smoothed by the rain and wind, plants beginning to grow along the path again.

Hazel sits down on the ground, back pressed up against a tree, and pulls an old bandanna out of his pocket. When he had first seen it after he woke up, body aching and covered in bandages, he had cried inconsolably, clutching it to his chest. Back then, he thought that he would have been better off dead—everything had hurt too much and nothing had seemed worth the pain. It still hurts, looking at it, though the pain is more of an ache instead of a gaping wound.

He folds the bandanna into a neat triangle and settles it across his thigh, strokes the cloth with his fingers. He wonders who it had once belonged to and what that person had been to him.

*****

Four men arrive in town, riding a strange metal carriage, two years and three months after Hazel lost his memory. One of them looks like a monk but definitely doesn’t act like a monk—he yells at the two men sitting in the back and whacks them with a paper fan. The driver smiles blandly the entire time. There’s something about them that feels familiar, though Hazel has no idea who they are.

 _They shouldn’t be traveling together_ , he thinks, but the thought is immediately followed by confusion. Why would he think that?

They pass the marketplace where Hazel’s selling vegetables at the stall he co-owns with old man Peng. He supposes they’re heading towards the inn—the village is near enough to the main mountain road that they get a moderate amount of traffic during the warmer season.

Hazel is struck again by the strange feeling that they seem familiar. He pauses mid-lift of a crate of yams when he realizes that maybe he does know them. Maybe he knew them from before and maybe they can tell him who he is and where he’s from or if he has any family that’s worried about him—

“I’m telling you this is a waste of time!”

It’s the tall redhead from the group, bickering with the youngest as they walk back towards the marketplace.

“And I’m telling you I’m _sure_ that this is near the place where we fought Nii!”

Hazel drops the crate. The woman inspecting the vegetables on display jerks back in surprise and then looks at him, concern obvious on her face. The yams scatter all over the ground. His hands feel numb, and for a moment everything sounds fuzzy, like he’s underwater.

Hazel blinks as everything slowly goes back to normal, the usual buzz of the marketplace growing clearer. The woman is still there, hesitating. Beside her, the two strangers are frozen, staring at him.

He can feel his cheeks heating up with embarrassment as he hurries to accept the woman’s payment. After he hands over her purchase, Hazel turns to look at the two men. “I’m sorry about that. Can I help you with anything?”

The younger one takes a step forward, squints at him. The taller one looks at him warily. Hazel feels the sweat beading on his brow. Something inside of him is absolutely terrified, is telling him to run away before they hurt him. It doesn’t make sense, but the feeling remains, nestled in his chest.

“Yeah, uh, how much are these?” the younger man asks, pointing at some herbs. The redhead shoots him a sharp look that he ignores in favor of waiting for Hazel’s response.

Hazel moves on autopilot, naming the price, wrapping up the herbs in some paper, taking the money and counting out the change. By the time that he remembers to ask them if they know him, they’re out of sight.

*****

He’s trying to hold onto something important, but it’s crumbling into dust in his hands. No matter how hard he tries, it keeps slipping through his grasp, grains of sand flowing through his fingers and being swept away by the wind. There’s a glimpse of a sad smile and the feeling of fingers brushing against his cheek.

Somewhere behind him, a crow is screaming into the night. He doesn’t know if crows can scream, but there’s no other word to describe the sound that makes it feel like his head is about to explode. The crow keeps screaming as it spreads its wings and blocks out the light of the moon—

Hazel sits up in bed, gasping for breath, clutching the bandanna tightly in his hand. He doesn’t remember taking it out of the drawer he keeps it in at night.

At first he thinks his nightmare terrified him to the point of waking up, but then he realizes that his heart is pounding in his chest because of anger, not fear. He wants to hit something, to feel flesh ripping apart between his hands, to destroy whatever it is that took away the most important thing he’d ever had. He can feel himself shaking at the effort not to lash out and destroy something, anything.

Even more terrible than the anger coursing through him is the fact that he doesn’t know _why_ he’s angry or _who_ or _what_ the focus of his rage is. He doesn’t know what he’s lost, only that it’s gone and he can’t ever have it back.

*****

The next time Hazel’s at the marketplace, he sees the other two strangers—the monk and the driver. They make their way to his stall calmly, the monk silent and frowning the entire time and the driver looking around at the products on display. The monk inspects him with narrowed eyes as the driver buys some fruit and makes small talk.

They leave as calmly as they’d arrived, the monk giving him one last hard look before he walks after the driver.

Hazel acts like nothing’s wrong. He doesn’t feel like asking them any questions.

*****

There’s a man standing in front of him—dark skin, tall, broad shoulders. Hazel can see his lips moving, but there’s no sound, everything quiet and still around them.

The moon is full but something’s blocking it out, something with large bat-like wings spread wide across the sky. It flaps its wings and then flies off, and now the moonlight shines down brightly on Hazel and the other man, painting everything silver.

When Hazel wakes up, tears rolling down his cheeks, he can’t remember the man’s face.

*****

Hazel’s sitting beside the tool shed, bent over a broken rake and trying to reattach the head to the handle. It’s just one of a long list of chores and errands that need to be done, and though there’s no pressing need to finish all of them so quickly, he finds that he’s too restless to take it easy.

Relaxing means his mind ends up wandering, and lately it keeps going back to the four strangers. It’s almost been a week since they came into town, and though they don’t look like they’re planning on staying permanently, they also don’t look like they plan on leaving any time soon.

Sleeping is an even worse option. His nightmares have been getting worse and worse, growing louder, a feeling of emptiness that pushes up against his anger, threatening to suffocate him. There’s a voice now as well, a man talking about what Hazel knows is his life from even further back than before, but he can’t hear anything over the crow’s screaming.

So Hazel goes to bed later and wakes up earlier, does more chores and spends more time out in the fields and forests. He stays at the marketplace stall longer and prays that none of the four strangers come back to buy anything. The contentment and the fulfillment he had in his life is completely gone, replaced by anxiety about a life he doesn’t want to remember anymore.

He looks up at the sound of a foot scuffing against the dirt, sees old man Peng standing in front of him looking worried. “Are you alright?”

Hazel wants to tell him that’s he’s not alright, that he wakes up in a blind rage almost every night now, gritting his teeth so hard that his jaws hurt, angry tears tracking down his cheeks. He wants to tell old man Peng that he’s found some people who may be able to fill in the large gaps in his memory but doesn’t want to see them ever again because every time he does, he feels the almost overwhelming urge to run away and hide or, lately, the need to hurt them, bite them, rip their limbs out of their sockets.

He _wants_ to tell old man Peng what’s happening to him, but instead he just shrugs and says, “I’m fine.”

*****

It hasn’t been that long since Hazel last went up the mountain but he’s still restless and he’s run out of things to fix or fiddle with, and he’s been banned from the marketplace because old man Peng thinks he needs a break.

He walks slowly along the trail he usually uses, takes deep breaths of the mountain air as he goes. The closer he gets to his usual spot, the better he feels, the strange anxiety clouding his thoughts fading away with every step. The bandanna is folded neatly in his pocket and he reaches in every now and then to touch it.

Hazel’s around fifteen minutes away from his usual spot when he hears voices. He freezes when he sees the four men that turned his world upside down, walking towards him from the other end of the path, but then he forces himself to keep going. They’d taken away the calm of his everyday life but they won’t take this from him, the small area on the mountainside that he’s come to think of as his, where he’d been given what was basically a second chance at living.

 _There’s no reason to be scared_ , he tells himself, one hand in his pocket, clutching the bandanna. Lately, he’s begun to bring it everywhere.

He keeps his steps even, eyes straight ahead. The tallest one and the youngest one are arguing again, this time about what to eat for lunch. As the group passes Hazel, the driver nods politely at him and the monk glances his way before going back to smoking his cigarette. Automatically, Hazel nods back in return, acknowledging the greeting.

He keeps walking in autopilot until he reaches the place where he was found, is jarred out of his thoughts when he sees a small mound of dirt with a crude stone marker on top of it. Wildflowers are placed on a neat pile on top of the mound.

It’s new, the dirt newly disturbed. A few feet away, Hazel can see a shallow indentation where the stone marker used to lie on the ground.

 _“And I’m telling you I’m_ sure _that this is near the place where we fought Nii!”_

It feels like it’s been more than two weeks since he heard those words, and now they come back to him now in a rush.

In his mind, there’s the vague outline of the man he dreamed about, tall and silent, his presence oddly comforting. Hazel still doesn’t know what he looks like, but something inside him prompts him to kneel down in front of the makeshift grave and pull out the bandanna.

He folds it into a triangle and then folds it again and again until it’s a narrow strip of cloth that he ties around the stone marker. He doesn’t know why he does it, but it feels _right_ , in a way that he’d never really felt before. It also feels like _goodbye_ , and that’s what sets him off, starts him crying in a way that scares him with its intensity.

He kneels on the ground and cries the way he cried when he first woke up more than two years ago, terrified and not knowing anything. Looking at the grave hurts the way looking at the bandanna used to, like going to sleep and not waking up would be the best thing that would ever happen to him.

Old man Peng finds him hours later. Hazel probably looks disgusting, his face is covered in dried tears and snot, but old man Peng just takes one look at the grave and bends down as far as his old bones will let him to wrap Hazel in an awkward hug.

*****

Seven years and eight months after Gat dies, the Sanzo party makes their way back west to meet with Sharak Sanzo.

As they pass through a small mountain village, Goku insists on stopping by the place where he made a small grave for Gat. Gojyo complains about the delay because he’s a giant asshole, but Hakkai doesn’t mind and Sanzo doesn’t say no, so they decide to rest at the village for a few days.

On the way to Gat’s grave they pass by an old man walking in the opposite direction. He smiles at them politely as they pass one another.

They’re surprised to find another small mound beside Gat’s grave, a neatly-cut slab of rock marking it. There’s no name on the new grave marker, but there’s a piece of cloth tied around Gat’s, the pattern too faded to make out.

They stand there quietly for a few moments, the only sound the wind blowing through the trees.

“I hope they’re happy,” Goku says softly.

Sanzo looks at him, messes up his hair like he’s still a kid and not a young man as tall as Sanzo is. “Of course you do, monkey.”


End file.
